12 POINT BUCK | CHAI DUNCAN, LEILA ARMSTRONG
10.05.2009 | 11.22.2009
12 POINT BUCK is a collaborative duo comprised of Lethbridge artists Leila Armstrong and Chai Duncan. In the Fall of 2007, Duncan and Armstrong became aware of a mutual interest in exploring representations of nature as artifice. Believing that a combination of their approaches would result in a whole greater than the sum of its parts, they began working together. Armstrong plays with pop depictions of wildlife, highlighting how we tend to anthropomorphize what we actually find unpredictable and threatening (the Disney-fication of wildlife). Whereas Duncan explores the fetishization and romanticization of the fauna in our cultural representations of nature, which trivializes the very eco-systems, on which our lives depend. Both have found the closed theatre of the digital print and the diorama to be rewarding. Each artist has produced a series of images that examine the roles toys, models, figurines and statuary play in the production of fantastical narratives about nature.
In their DVD, titled Deer Me, the familiar sight of a deer in the coulees is transformed into a loose narrative in which a creature in a toy mask and wolf skin coat walks with some inelegance through the landscape. This awkward journey allows viewers to consider the lack of alignment between the natural world and our idealized notions about nature. Currently Duncan and Armstrong are constructing a life-size plywood herd as well as working on a series of paintings based on paint-by-number and other romanticised landscape and wildlife scenes. These paintings will situate idealized renderings of wildlife within the already constructed, kitsch landscape. As well, each artist produces works complimentary to 12 Point Buck’s joint practice.
12 POINT BUCK has been working collaboratively for two years and has already enjoyed much success. In 2008 our first video Deer Me was shown as Part of the Toronto Urban Film Festival (aka TUFF) and in March 2009 our installation Herd appeared at Parlour in Lethbridge. Future exhibitions include Gallery 44 in Toronto in January/February 2010 and Harcourt House in Edmonton in September 2010. It is very important to us that our work is both playful and accessible while addressing the theoretical discourses and social issues attached to it (as outlined in our artists’ statements).
Chai Duncan
The songs I heard were beautiful and sad. At first I thought they were coming from outside and then, when I realized they weren’t I was amazed. As I listened more and deeper, and I started to understand a little of their yearning, I tried to help them find a way home. They were lost and some were afraid and their pining was breaking my heart. A heaviness followed me as I searched for the wild. Again and again what I found was the pastoral, the filtered, the homogenized, the picturesque and the utopian. I could hear the wind outside blowing – rain was falling and I knew the ocean roared somewhere to the west. Their journey and their need inspired me to act, but what overwhelmed me were their songs of longing.
Leila Armstrong
Having grown up in Vancouver, I never ceased to be amazed by tourists attempting to hand feed skunks at English Bay. Since coming to Southern Alberta, I have similarly witnessed people leaping out of their minivans to snap pictures of a bear with cubs at Waterton National Park. The Disney-ification of wildlife has created storylines in which dreadful, enduring odours and gruesome maulings are replaced with anthropomorphism. Animals exist for entertainment purposes, even outside animated films and zoos. They are wandering around beaches and beside roadways in order to enhance our vacation experiences. I do not think it is any coincidence that I began working on this theme during a residency at the Banff Centre in 2005.
